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In April, the government officially changed the name of its public database of drug war deaths from "Homicides Presumably Related to Organized Crime" to "Death Presumably Related to Criminal Rivalries." The media are also beginning to watch their language. A voluntary agreement signed in late March by Mexico's most powerful broadcasters and many newspapers says news stories should "avoid using the terminology used by criminals." The accord did not give any specific list of words to avoid. Prominent newspapers such as Reforma and La Jornada chose not to sign the agreement, and some media figures such as columnist and author Guadalupe Loaeza say they won't be bound by what she calls "self-censorship." "It is absurd, it's a puritanical measure," said Loaeza. The world of drug cartels and drug violence "is our reality, and it has to be written about." The language dilemma is part of a larger debate on how to cover a drug war whose images are becoming more and more gruesome. Cartel postings on YouTube have become part of daily life, showing people being tortured by the gangs for information. Among them was a policeman who revealed a prison scandal in which the warden allowed members of a gang to leave their cells to commit murders and then return. In January, a major TV station interviewed alleged drug cartel operator Jose Jorge Balderas, known by his initials "J.J.", hours after he was arrested in connection with the bar shooting of Paraguayan soccer star Salvador Cabanas, who played in Mexico. Dressed in a Polo shirt, Balderas appeared handsome, comfortable, sly, relaxed and reasonable, bragging about how well his drug business was doing. "When they sit him there in a normal shirt, like he was a movie star, they're glorifying him," said Wallace, the anti-crime activist. "We don't want to become apologists for criminals, or create false idols for young people." And drug gangs may have exceeded the ability of word coiners as images spread showing the killers' latest practice: victims whose faces have been skinned and hung on posts or sewn to soccer balls. There is still no word to describe that.
[Associated
Press;
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